Baylor Student Body President Vetoes New Non-Discrimination Policy

While the veto stuns the student senator who introduced the resolution, Wesley Hodges tells reporters, “Simply because the university disagrees with your actions or lifestyle, does not imply that it is seeking to attack you.”

BY Diane Anderson-Minshall

November 02 2013 11:30 AM ET

Last week we reported that Baylor University, a Christian college in Texas best known to LGBT readers for having lesbian WNBA star Brittney Griner as an alum, announced that the student government voted to change the campus sexual conduct code, to stop singling out students who have sexual relationships with people of the same sex. The new Sexual Misconduct Non-Discrimination Act would replace the the phrase "homosexual acts" with "non-marital consensual deviate sexual intercourse" in the student policy.

Turns out not everyone in student government was on board with the decision. According to Regina Dennis at the Waco Tribune-Herald, Baylor University’s student body president Wesley Hodges surprised the student body yesterday by vetoing the resolution, telling the senators that the school's board of regents wouldn't have given their final approval for the policy change anyway, because the entire student body hadn't voted on the issue.

Dennis reported that the senate held a closed-door session after the veto but could not reach a two-thirds majority vote in order to override Hodges' veto.

“I truly believe that Baylor treats its students with grace, love and truth, and in doing that seeks to accept all students, but does not affirm all student behaviors,” Hodges told the Tribune. “Simply because the university disagrees with your actions or lifestyle, does not imply that it is seeking to attack you.”

However Trenton Garza, the senator who was pushing for the change in language, said that the current policy is unfair because it doen't "ban all sexual acts between heterosexual students" as it does for gay students.

“Something that I feel, as a Christian, is that all too often Christianity is being known for what it is against, rather than what it is for,” Garza told Dennis. “In light of that, I wanted to show that we are for loving people . . . as small as a wording change really can be, the symbolism can spark something much greater.”